Russia’s Aeroflot cancels flights after pro-Ukraine hackers claim cyber-attack

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The Russian airline Aeroflot was forced to cancel dozens of flights on Monday after a pro-Ukraine hacking group with a track record of claiming responsibility for hacking targets in Russia said it had carried out a cyber-attack.Aeroflot did not provide further details about the cause of the problem or how long it would take to resolve, but departure boards at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport turned red as flights were cancelled at a time when many Russians take their holidays.The Kremlin said the situation was worrying, and prosecutors confirmed the airline’s problems were the result of a hack and opened a criminal investigation.

A statement purporting to be from a hacking group called Silent Crow said it had carried out the operation with a Belarusian group called Cyber Partisans, and linked it to the war in Ukraine.Glory to Ukraine! Long live Belarus!” said the statement.Silent Crow has previously claimed responsibility for attacks this year on a Russian real estate database, a state telecoms company, a large insurer, the Moscow government’s IT department and the Russian office of the South Korean carmaker Kia. Some of these resulted in big data leaks.

“The information that we are reading in the public domain is quite alarming. The hacker threat is a threat that remains for all large companies providing services to the population,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said.We will, of course, clarify the information and wait for appropriate clarifications.”Aeroflot, the transport ministry and the aviation regulator did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the hacking claim, according to Reuters.

Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at the cybersecurity firm Sophos, said the attack appeared to be driven by political motives.It appears to be a sort of a politically motivated hacktivist event from two groups opposed to Russia,” he said.Pilling added that despite Silent Crow’s claims to have accessed the personal data of Aeroflot customers, the attack did not appear to be financially motivated – unlike ransomware attacks that cripple a target’s computer systems and siphon off data for financial gain.